


i'll be missing you

by benedettatello



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 17:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10724217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benedettatello/pseuds/benedettatello
Summary: “I just want you to remember that I always see you as Emma, and no one else. No versions of yourself exist to me when I look at you.”Emma smiles and fixates the moment in her mind because she knows the next one could be her last.





	i'll be missing you

**Author's Note:**

> It's 3:15am so this will probably filled with mistakes as English is not my mother tongue. Bear with me.
> 
> This is super dark and based on another song called I'll Be Missing You.  
> Here's the link, I strongly recommend a listen: http://youtu.be/mM0-ZU8njdo
> 
> It just inspired me to write this story because I like suffering and pain is all I want.
> 
> Enjoy this x

**i. every step i take**

“How would you like a glass of the best apple cider you’ve ever tasted?” Emma snorts. “For good old times’ sake?” Emma snorts again, can’t help but follow Regina into her studio. Drink At 10pm After Dinner With The Son was a weekly occurrence, because there is no way Emma survives being around Regina 2+ hours without a drink. Just because.

The brunette seats on one end of the couch sipping her cider. Emma prefers to stand in front of the fireplace, barely lit but enough powerful to light the room along with the moonlight. When Henry is put to bed, they always found themselves in that very same place having a drink; chatting, thinking, coexisting. Whatever suited their mood.

“You’re quiet.” Regina’s voice breaks the ice and it almost stings because the silence was starting to soothe Emma in unspeakable ways. She just wanted a tiny little moment to just be present in the world and forget what was actually going on in her life. “I’m thinking.” “Tell me something I don't know.” Emma took a long sip of her drink. She wished she was drunk enough to hold this conversation.

“When people with magic die, where do they go?” Emma turns and Regina’s world stops. Everything’s silenced. Faded. Not a sound. “What do you want me to say?” Emma looks around, trying to see if the answers to her questions might be already there and she just didn't focus enough to see. She sees nothing. “I would tell if you were lying anyway.” Fair enough.

Regina tries to find balance and composure. “I don't know. They can dissolve into the air, or take someone else’s body. I’m not sure if it works just the same for the Saviours.” Emma nods and looks down.

Always the different one. Always the unfortunate exception.

“Your fate is a unique one, Emma.” “Tell me something I don't know.” Regina stands up as if on auto mode and feels her legs tremble. She takes a step further to stand right beside Emma, still with her head down. “But so are you.”

Emma looks up. Rejuvenated for a moment but then broken again, every kind of relief always lasting way less than she actually needed. A shy hand caresses her, as if the slightest touch would make her melt or disappear before she was meant to. “It isn’t any of your concern, though. You will fight this.” Emma is left surprised when her lying detector doesn't go off.

 

**ii. every move i make**

There’s nothing more extraordinary than the stubbornness of the ocean that, no matter how many times its waves are sent back, it still refuses to stop kissing the shore. And, even though it sounds like a mess, what comes out of it is the gentlest of the sounds. The calm. The quiet. The stillness.

Emma is sitting on the sand, headphones on and breathing the scenery in front of her in; and cherishes every second of it. Moments like these are a rarity (especially in her case), so she doesn't take them for granted. The sun is about to set and she closes her eyes. “Mind if I join you?” If Regina wasn't one of the best human beings on the planet, she would have flipped at whoever dared to interrupt her moment of mindfulness.

So Regina sits besides her and says nothing. Moments go by. They feel like eternity. “Has Henry ever told you if he ever wanted to attend college?” Regina’s astounded, and so she frowns. “He always showed interest in psychology. He says to be curious about people, their stories and their behaviours. No wonder he immersed himself in that book.” Regina turns to look at Emma to see that the latter hasn’t moved, staring at the ocean. “Why are you asking?”

A tiny smile appears on Emma’s face. “He will get that, won’t he?” Emma looks back. “The moment I first held him in my arms I always wished he’d get everything that this world has to offer him. So he will get that, right?” No more smiles on her face. Realisation dawns on her Regina's face. “We will look into options when the time comes.” Regina stares intensely at Emma because she wants to see what her soul is trying so hard to hide. “Together.”

“Promise me he will get that.” But her soul is surrounded by barriers that even she can’t seem to tear down. “Emma, we’re not discussing about this. You will live to see him going to college. You will live to see his graduation. You’re not dying, for hell’s sake.” Regina’s betrayed by her lips because they start to tremble and they show more than what she can conceal.

They’re signals for both her immense faith in the blonde in front of her and enormous fear because she has no idea what might happen next. “Do you know who Notorious B.I.G. was?”

What? “What?” “He was a rapper who died many years ago because he was shot.” Regina’s beyond confused at this point. “Didn’t know you were in a ghetto gang when you were younger.” Emma rolls her eyes to the back of her head because she _can’t_ believe Regina can be such a dork sometimes; and choses to ignore her.

Instead, she removes her right headphone and puts it in the brunette’s ear, “When he died many of his rapper friends gathered and wrote a song as a tribute, his wife sings on this too. I used to listen to this song all the time because it was constantly played on the radio at this supermarket I used to steal things from.” Emma plays the song again so Regina can listen to it from the start. “You don’t have to be a fan nor like this kind of music to understand through the lyrics how much he was loved.”

Silence fills the air for the next few minutes as they just sat with the infinity of the ocean in front of them, listening to the song. As the tune faded into nothingness, Regina wasn’t surprised to find out that her cheeks were wet with tears. Because she knows. She knows why Emma listens to this song out of all the songs in existence. Regina makes a move and grabs Emma’s face in her hands, cold palms with boiling skin, because Emma couldn't stop the tears no matter how hard she tried; and stares at her. They just look at each other as if they’re trying to understand the purpose of it all in each other’s eyes because that’s where they feel all the answers to their questions are.

Regina instinctively leans forward and then makes a last second change and presses her cheek to Emma’s, because she can’t bear. If she takes a step too far, everything that follow will be so much harder than it already is. Emma breathes hard, in and out. “I like to think of you when I listen to this song. I like to think this is somewhat close to how you remember me.” And Regina can’t.

She just _can't_ , because she was never supposed to feel this pain, because it is too soon. She thinks about how Emma barely lived, considering all the pain she put her through in the first place; how she never got to do silly things like going to prom or getting drunk on a bonfire night. How she never got to cherish her parents at the fullest. How she never saw Henry grow up. How she never experienced something as pure as love. She did so little and there was so much more she still had to do.

Regina wants to curl up with her and protect her from all the evil in the world, and so she thinks about herself and how selfish she feels because she does nothing but inflicting more pain, and giving illusions and false hopes. Regina turns slightly and presses her lips to the corner of Emma’s mouth, as if to say _I want to go there but I really don’t want to go there_ because oh god, this is too much and she feels to have already passed the point of no return.

She keeps her lips pressed there because if she moves, she’ll end up ruining something so precious and fragile and she’s tired, so tired of seeing things crumbling at her feet. If she doesn’t, she feels like she’s denying her last silent plea because she realises that that is it.

Emma has really given up.

She feels soft, soft lips brushing against her cheek and then her lips; and this isn’t her call to make, she has no right to untangle herself from this, because Emma is about to die and she just wants to stop the pain. If she is meant to be a source of joy and solace for one single moment, then she will be, this is Emma and nothing could ever compare.

They kiss each other, softly, like they're at the edge of the world, like this is the first time, like this is the last time.

**iii. every single day**

Emma grabs the decanter to pour herself a drink, the second of the night. Henry just went to bed and Regina is lying on the couch in front of the fireplace. It’s just one of those nights, for the millionth time in their lives. They fell into this routine, and routines were like poison.

Emma goes to sit next Regina and puts an arm around her shoulders. “Do you remember when I first taught you to use magic and said that you were wasting so much potential?” Emma sips on her drink before placing it on the coffee table and then turns to the brunette, “Yes I do.” And then Regina sees Emma and herself in the mine with the device, them moving the moon, them defeating the chernabog, all at once and shakes her head.

“I’m so glad I could see you embracing everything that you are, Emma.” A smile, because Emma deserves this and so much more. “Sometimes I think you really don't believe anything about this reality and just want to go back and be a bailsbondperson in Boston. But you can't deny that another part of yourself exists, and sometimes it suffocates you with expectations,” Regina looks down and grabs her hand and looks back up at her.

“I just want you to remember that I always see you as Emma, and no one else. No versions of yourself exist to me when I look at you.” Emma smiles and fixates the moment in her mind because she knows the next one could be her last. Emma brings her free hand behind the couch to softly caress the brunette’s locks and drops her forehead on Regina’s temple and brushes a gentle kiss, keeping her tears at bay as best as she can.

**iv. every time i pray**

_It’s time._

Two words, seven letters and one broken heart.

Regina sobs reading Snow’s text message because life is about to change. She reaches the town centre and there they were. Gideon under the clock tower and Emma a few steps away. The pirate, the Charmings and Henry even further. She sees Gideon talking but doesn't listen because she just focuses about how this could be the last moment she sees Emma just, her. And everything that was and what could have been. But she’s so tired of living her life one hypothetical situation at time.

She runs to her and Gideon immediately shouts, “Don't come any closer or you’ll have to die too.” Emma turns and sees her mess perfectly reflected in Regina. “Emma, please, just fight. Just try to fight it. Please.” Regina is willing to get on her knees and pray to somebody, to Emma that she tries to fight her fate one more time. But she knows that there are no gods and Emma has really, given up. “Thanks for trying, Madame Mayor.”

A blade goes in and out of the blonde’s abdomen in one shift motion and everything becomes blurred for the both of them. As she falls on the ground, Emma is left with only the sky to stare, and sees a million things. So many stares that once shone so bright and now are blacked out. She feels like they turned out the lights for her before she could begin to understand what it means to shine. She feels something grabbing her body and uses the last ounce of strength left in herself to turn and to die while losing herself forever at the immensity of Regina Mills.

**v. i’ll be missing you**

When winter approaches, you barely can start to appreciate the light because it fades away so quickly to make way for the night. Winters in Storybrooke have always been mildly cold but this year no, you couldn't rest your bones.

Regina stares down at the tombstone in front of her, and feels helpless and useless and unworthy of everything. “It hasn’t been this cold since you first came into town. I don't know if it's just the weather or the universe playing games with me,” she sniffs because she is not allowed to have any kind of breakdown.

She lowers and touches the freezing tomb and somehow it makes her numb. “I once read a book where it said that humans created tombs as a kind of bridge between the living and the dead so they can still be able to have a connection.” She doesn't feel anything. Anything at all.

“I refuse to believe this, Emma. I don't think I need a bridge because I still can feel your magic flow.” Regina turns to see her picture on the tomb: blonde locks, a red jacket and her trademark _I know it all_ smug look on her face. Her heart shutters, because she just wants to reach forward and be able to hold her again.

“I don't need a bridge because you’re still somewhere, in another dimension. Wherever you are, there I will find you,” A loud sob escapes from her throat because it has only been a few weeks and this is more than what she can't handle, but when it comes to Emma nothing and no one matters. Not even sounding like a Charming.

She stands up and smiles down at her picture, hoping the blonde is doing the same. “I will return to you. I promise.” She caresses the smile captured in the photograph and walks away after leaving a small note on her tombstone:

 

_What a life to take, what a bond to break,_

_I'll be missing you._


End file.
